Method and Apparatus for Graphical Data Compression

1. A system, comprising: a first computer; and a second computer remotely located from the first computer and in communication with the first computer via a network, said second computer comprising an encoder module; wherein the encoder module encodes and transmits a pixel color datum to the first computer; wherein, to encode the pixel color datum, the encoder module generates a bit, and wherein said bit indicates a number of different pixel color data that have been encoded since another datum was encoded, said another datum having a same color as the pixel color datum.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the encoder module further encodes the pixel color datum by generating additional bits that indicate a number of times that a corresponding pixel color is to be repeated.

3. The system of claim 1 , wherein the first computer comprises a first display and the second computer comprises a second display, and wherein the first computer decodes the bit and uses the bit to generate on the first display an image displayed on the second display.

4. The system of claim 1 , wherein the encoder comprises an updateable cache and uses the cache to encode the pixel color datum.

5. The system of claim 4 , wherein the cache comprises at least one entry, said at least one entry comprising at least one field, wherein the at least one entry corresponds to a pixel color.

6. The system of claim 4 , wherein the cache comprises a first entry and a second entry, said first entry corresponding to a first pixel color datum encoded more recently than a second pixel color datum corresponding to the second entry, wherein the first entry is of a higher priority level than the second entry.

7. The system of claim 4 further comprising a comparator coupled to the cache, said comparator adapted to compare a received pixel color datum to entries in the cache, wherein, if no entry matches the received pixel color datum, a new entry corresponding to the received pixel color datum is added to the cache.

8. The system of claim 5 , wherein said at least one field indicates an intensity level of red, an intensity level of green and an intensity level of blue used to generate the pixel color.

9. The system of claim 5 , wherein said at least one field indicates whether the datum having the same color as the pixel color datum was last encoded within a predetermined number of previously encoded pixel data.

10. The system of claim 5 , wherein said at least one field indicates when the datum having the same color as the pixel color datum was last encoded.

11. The system of claim 1 , wherein the encoder module transmits the bit to the encoder module in a bit stream, wherein a minimum width of the bit stream is 1 bit.